A notebook that will help you solve your problems
I’ve got a really fresh brain after this weekend because I read Jack’s Notebook by creativity and innovation expert Gregg Fraley, it’s my first time reading a literal business novel so it was refreshing to have a book put my visual senses to work and putting me in the story. Jack’s Notebook is essentially about a guy named Jack Huber and his friend Manny who is a professional problem solver that helps Jack get his life straight through the use of CPS (Creative problem solving) to solve his work and personal problems.
So what is CPS? It’s a technique developed by Alex Osborn who coined the term brainstorming and it basically helps you have more ideas and therefore more solutions to any problem you encounter. CPS brings order to the chaos that is solving problems, it’s a systematic process of creating lists and then making decisions. That simple!
Like business and life, the story has twists and turns and the problems that Jack faces are solved using CPS in a very simple way. This leaves you with this feeling of ‘uh that was easy!’ and I think this is really the big takeaway most people will get from the book…solving problems doesn’t have to be hard, it can be fun!
So if you’re stuck in a corner and always seem to do the same thing over and over again with the same result because you try the same old ideas then I recommend you read this book. In fact even if you think you’re pretty fly at solving problems already and don’t think you need anymore lecturing, you should read this book because most likely your brain has gone stale and need some refreshing…we all do!
Mr. Fraley has given us a notebook with all his secrets and he wants to help us solve our problems in a fun way and the plus is it’s also a great story. Get it. Read it. Start your own notebook.
Once you’ve read it, follow Gregg Fraley on Twitter and tell him what you think.
P.S. Thank you Mr. Fraley!
Must read innovation stories of the week: A culture of innovation starts with us
Any change we want to see in ANY domain starts with the man in the mirror:
I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change
Guess who said that…
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How To Be An Innovative, Not Just Business, Leader (Forbes)
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How Google sets goals and measures success (Don Dodge)
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A Culture of Innovation Starts with…Us. (Zane Safrit)
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How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation (Social Media Examiner)
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How to spot – or avoid – innovators (Innovate on Purpose)
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Break the rules to reveal innovation opportunities (Innovation Tools)
Weekend innovation tip: Outthink opponents like Peyton Manning
Ah yes the Super Bowl is here and we have one of the greatest quarterbacks in the game playing in it: Peyton Manning.
Peyton Manning is unlike any quarterback, he operates a no huddle offense that relies on reading the defense and making adjustments before the snap to create confusion for the defense so they don’t really know what’s coming at them. What makes all this possible is his great use of the OODA loop which stands for observe, orient, decide, and act.
This happens so fast that opposing defenses have a hard time making a play on him because the ball leaves his hands so fast that they’re left guessing where he might throw the ball which enabled him to be sacked only 10 times this season! What this means is that he had more opportunities to throw the ball to his receivers for plays.
What sets him apart from other quarterbacks is essentially his decision cycle (how he goes through the OODA loop) for reading opposing defenses is extremely fast and this is enables him to make quick on the fly adjustments to the defensive sets opposing teams throw at him. What looks to us as him being a great quarterback is really him just outthinking defenses and picking them apart!
The result to using the OODA loop as a strategy is it opens up a lot of options for you because it makes you think in the moment and then make adjustments on the fly, this enables you to break your opponents own decision cycle by thinking a step ahead of them and forcing them to guess.
So how do you start using the OODA loop to craft strategy?
First you need to understand that the traditional way of crafting strategy is based on a static inflexible plan with the goal of executing a step by step action plan, in essence something predictable. Well with ‘change being constant’ you need to shift your thinking towards shaping strategy moment by moment, day by day as you learn from your customers and your competitive environment. The goal is to outthink and stay a step ahead of competitors and the key to this is speed, as in the faster you go through your strategic learning cycle the more readily you’ll outpace your competitors.
P.S. I’m a Colts fan and Peyton Manning is my favorite quarterback. Go Colts!
Weekend innovation tip: WTF is innovation to you?
Innovation is about change and progress not great ideas.
I get two responses to that question: dull faces or some lunchbox definition.
Businesses like the sound of the word of ‘innovation’ appearing in their vocabulary yet rarely can everyone in the organization come to a collective definition of what is means to them and this is a BIG problem. They’re chickens running around without a head because they don’t know where they’re headed and this is because they’re adopting someone else’s definition for themselves and fail to see that it doesn’t fit them.
There are many definitions to innovation but I will take a different approach and start with questions to help you construct your own definition of innovation instead. These questions will absolutely stretch your thinking around what’s important to you, your customers and the world which, and this my friends is what innovation is all about: change and progress.
- What will we do differently of better than our competitors to achieve greater value for our customers and superior profits for our firm?
- What’s missing in the world of our customers that we could create to make their life a lot more fun and easier?
- What do we want to create?
Let me put it to you this way: if you’re not changing something then you are NOT doing innovation.
Does your definition of innovation answers these questions?
Must read innovation stories of the week: Getting it done
It was an ‘innovation packed’ week that had everything starting from making excuses, ideating around small ideas, how to get it done, popular tools to use to tackle challenges and how to test your ideas. Pretty good eh!
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How to Encourage Small Innovations – (HBR)
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Rethinking Branding through Radical Innovation – (Servant of Chaos)
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Apple’s Secret? It Tells Us What We Should Love (HBR)
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Innovation: Excuses, Excuses, Excuses – (Think for a Change)
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Innovation: Getting It and Getting It Done – (Innovating to Win)
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Behavioural Innovation (Innovation Leadership Network)
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The most powerful innovation tools (Innovate on Purpose)
INNOVATION: Change your internal chip
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction." – Einstein
Yesterday I was with a client proposing some new initiatives and as always there’s a bottleneck to new ideas. Someone’s ego prevents them from seeing other alternatives to how things can be done and is so set in their traditional views that anything new is irrelevant. In thinking about this fact with some of the people there I said: Like computer chips that evolve and get better all the time, so must we.
Voila!
Do you remember how in the movie Terminator 2 Sarah and John Connor take out and modify the Terminator’s internal cpu so it can can learn and not be following preset rules? Well that’s exactly what we have to do with ourselves and people who are impervious to ‘there’s always a better way’ speak.
‘There’s a better way’ chip
Honestly I think most people are just afraid of improving their lives and find it hard accepting that changing their ‘internal chip’ (mental model) sounds like black magic but the magic is not the chip, it’s in letting go of their ego. First you have to understand that we’ve all been programmed to think how we think, our past experiences determine our beliefs and therefore how we see and think about everything around us. We bring with us assumptions that limit us from seeing other alternatives that might lead to a better opportunity but then again you already knew this.
The truth is everything we believe to be real is in our heads, it’s in that thing we call brain. That ‘organic chip’ that helps us make ‘safe’ decisions is sometimes best to throw away and use another one. This sounds crazy and it doesn’t require surgery, it requires a willingness to adopt other people’s mental models.
So how do you ‘change your chip’? Here are few things I think you can do:
- Borrow someone else’s chip. Hang around people with a different set of chips than yours and see how you can use some of their abilities for your own advantage.
- Make your own chip. If you could put together abilities you’d like to have from other people which would they be? For example, combine the abilities of Steve Jobs + Picasso + Leonardo Da Vinci and what would you have? How do you integrate them into your thinking?
- Improve your chip. Hack yourself and see where there are holes that you can improve on. Like computer chips that evolve and get better all the time, so must we. There is no governing rule like Moore’s Law that limits our own thinking!
Changing minds, hearts, and behaviors is key to innovating and a mind full of differing perspectives is better than one with just one perspective, tomorrow I’ll share with you a mind trick I use to be able to shift my thinking from my own egotistical perspective.
The important takeaway is we don’t have to wait another 50 years to have implanted chips in our heads that help us think better, we can start right now. In fact why would we even want to be plugged into a computer telling us what to do, it’s better to think for ourselves.
What do you think, how do you improve your own thinking?
Strategy: Keep the ball moving
I’m a basketball junkie so I was delighted to read Fast Company’s excellent inside look at basketball start Steve Nash which examines how Nash runs his work life outside of basketball, just like the Suns offense, in constant chaos. Nash runs THE most unorthodox offense in the NBA, which is unplanned, unpredictable and all on the fly.
No one better embodies the metabolism of our times, when industries, technologies, and careers are in constant flux. In leading Phoenix to the league’s best record to start this season and, most likely, to a return to the play-offs, Nash demonstrates how to navigate uncertainty — with flexibility, collaboration, and inventiveness. He has developed a gift for finding order in chaos. He adapts to new information, assesses the risks, and creates opportunities for him and his teammates to succeed. Nash improvises.
We all need to be improvisers now, to transition between the jobs we have and the backup plans we may need to pursue in the current economic crisis. Between the ways we’re accustomed to working and the new habits shaped by Twitter, Facebook, and other new tech tools. Between the recession and the postrecession world.
Both on and off the court, Nash’s exploits illuminate lessons about how to manage these transitions.
Why you should you read it? Very simple…because he improvises strategy on the fly and that is how companies business strategy should be developed. Learn from Steve Nash, stay ahead of the game by keeping the ball moving.
Must read innovation stories of the week: What are you the most at?
You wont stand out from the crowd if you keep playing by the same old rules as everyone else in your market. Are you the most of anything?
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What is Design Thinking, Really? « emergent by design
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Create a Garden of Innovation! – Idea Champions
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What’s Your Company’s Sentence? – Bill Taylor – Harvard Business Review
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There Really Is Nothing that Cannot Be Innovated « I’m Not Actually a Geek
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7 steps to turn inspiration into innovation – BusinessWeek
Weekend innovation tip: Be a kid again
Guess what? ‘innovation’ is going to be the keyword of the year again. More specifically how you reinvent your business from the inside out is what’s going to separate the leaders from the laggards and this doesn’t happen with some magic potion, it happens with questioning the assumptions by which your business operates.
According to new research one of the characteristics that distinguishes successful innovators is ‘questioning’, as in questioning the status quo. If you plan to get your company on the fast track to innovation this year, then asking questions is the first place to start and cultivate the habit of asking questions such as why? why not? and what if?
Now that you get it, here’s an exercise for you to help you cultivate the habit of ‘questioning’:
- Write 10 questions each day that challenge assumptions in your company or industry.
Yes, that’s it. Once you do this for a couple of weeks go back to your list and look for ways to reverse those assumptions or better yet, think how you can eliminate them from your thinking and come up with something new.
Understand: questions open the mind to new things, to more possibilities, to alternatives to new perspectives, they unbox your mind and take it back to childhood when anything was possible. The goal is to think like a kid again, without limits. Anything is possible.
What are your needs? Ask Twitter
Twitter is vast repository of information, conversations and individual thoughts. It’s hard to keep up and make sense of all of it but sometimes you get some concrete insights from people like Tom Peters telling you he’s underserved:
